well not actually. give me time. and a crayon.

Entries tagged with politics

The transition from Bush to Obama has been a strange one for me. There is a certain ease to opposing someone whose ideology is so different from yours. There is no need to be subtle, to try and tease apart where things are going wrong - you know why they are doing this thing that you hate: because they don't value what you value.

With Obama, things are different. He tells me that he values what I value - liberty, tolerance, security. And yet somehow I find myself outraged, again and again, by his actions. And I find myself trying to make excuses for why he is doing what he's doing. "He has to compromise," I tell myself. "He wants to stand up for our beliefs, but he can't."

It's what psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error. It is more complex than simply assuming the ill will of enemies and the good will of friends. It is a way for us to do so without feeling like bleeding hypocrites. We attribute bad outcomes to the situations our friends were put in. But we focus on the intentions of our enemies. It was their fault bad things happened. They wanted it that way. They could have changed things if they'd really tried.

And so Bush and Obama both pushed the bail-out, but Bush was stealing money for his cronies and Obama was making the best of an impossible situation. Neither Bush or Obama (so far) pushed for marriage equality, but Bush is a homophobe and Obama is just hoarding political capital. Bush and Obama have both kept troops in Iraq. Obama understands it is a strategic necessity. Bush likes shooting Iraqis just to watch them die.

Yes, there are concrete differences in ideology, policy, rhetoric between the two Presidents. But we should be wary that easy assumptions sometimes lead to disturbing biases. It is easy to let ourselves believe we are being even-handed, when in fact we are nothing of the sort.

I used to be more coherent with this sort of post, but damn. Just - damn. I am so fucking sick of Obama.

Edited to say:

Okay, let me try for some coherence.

We are a nation of human beings - people with the capacity for good things and bad things both - a nation of doctors, teachers, loving parents, artists and truth-seekers - a nation of thieves, demagogues, hypocrites, rapists and murderers.

All of politics - all of life - is a battle against those bad things. I don't believe there's a way to set up government to take over that battle for us. I don't believe there's a set of easy rules to live by - although some rules (thou shalt not kill, do unto others as...) are better than others.

Life is a struggle, a long upward climb against badness in ourselves and in others. I do my best in my own small little sphere because to do more would drain the joy out of my life and my own happiness is something that I at least have control over, something I can protect and nourish. I have a hard time believing that the sacrifices I could make would take us very many steps in the climb.

When the most powerful person on the face of the earth - when a man who I do believe has some compassion, some understanding of the depths of suffering in the world, some willingness to think outside the box - when he says, "No, that's too much to ask", "No, that's too big a change", "no, that's too high, too steep, too far" - when he chooses practicality over principle, money over fairness, rape and torture over justice and mercy, then I want to stop doing even the small things I do, I want to give up, lay down, enjoy my life as best I can and try to stop my ears against the cries of others.

Some people talk about the redistribution of wealth as though it's a bad thing. I'm not sure why, because many of these people are not filthy rich. Maybe some people still have a misguided sense of loyalty to an economic system that doesn't work. I've noticed that these people aren't terribly poor, either. Makes it easier to believe in abstract economic ideals when you know where your next meal is coming from.

I just find it amazing that, after years of massive wealth redistribution, with obscene wealth disparities not seen since the gilded age, and with an economic collapse directly caused by the recklessness of the financial elites, who grew wildly rich as the average american kept getting poorer and poorer, the solution seems to be to take massive amounts of taxpayer money and give it to the richest people in America, practically the only people not hurting right now.

No. No no no. Fuck that. We need to take massive amounts of rich people's money, and give it to the taxpayers.

We need to redistribute wealth.

When my grandfather was my age, the highest tax bracket was 95%. When my father was my age, the highest tax bracket was 70%. Under Reagan, that dropped from 70% to 30%. It's hovered in the 30s ever since.

(During the 1920s, taxes were even lower than they are now. It was FDR who raised taxes for the richest Americans during the great depression & WW2.)

We need to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. By a lot.

I don't know if there's a prayer of this happening. Obama is disappointingly milquetoast when it comes to challenging the financial status quo, although I agree with many of his stimulus ideas.

Anyway, I hope this bill passes. It's a teeny tiny step, but it's in the right direction:

I've had a couple of really good discussions recently about what it means to be a Jew, and how as an American diaspora Jew one is supposed to relate to Israel.

Judaism is a quirky sort of religion, in that it doesn't really require belief, per se. Nor does it require a specific set of practices. I don't believe in God, or that any of the stories of the Torah really happened. I don't keep kosher or go to temple. I don't know Hebrew or Yiddish. And yet, I'm Jewish.

Even if I converted to another religion. I would still be Jewish. And even if I never told my children I was Jewish, they would still be Jewish.

It's such a tenuous connection in some ways. What does it mean to be Jewish, if it is such an unchangeable state of being? I didn't ask for it. I can't help it. Why should I feel any responsibility for or special compassion for my fellow Jews? But I do.

I don't think any one arbitrary group of people are better human beings than another. But the tenets that a group lives by, and their shared history, can shape their behavior. And that's why I've never really rebelled against this arbitrary thing I am, this random label that's applied to me. Because so far as I can see, being Jewish is a good thing.

Like I said, there's nothing you have to do to be a Jew. But there are things we have tended to do.

Jews don't proselytize. We don't try to convert you. I mean, not only do we not hang you upside down and slowly drown you in buckets of water until you believe what we believe - we don't even try to pressure you at cocktail parties.

Jews understand suffering. Of course we understand it - we have lived it. And I don't even mean the Holocaust. I mean 2,250 years of suffering. From that comes - at least, I hope - a natural sympathy for the discriminated against, the oppressed. On passover, we dip our fingers into our wine and take out ten drops, one for each of the ten plagues visited upon the Egyptians. We lessen our joy out of respect for those who have suffered - even when those who suffer are the very people who enslaved us. Because we understand that all suffering is wrong. Not just because it was done to us, to Jews. It is wrong, period.

I won't pretend to be an expert. Or to speak for other's conceptions of Judaism. But this is my understanding. These are the thoughts that have made me comfortable and happy in identifying as a Jew.

And so the actions of Israel recently have been... almost disconcerting. Because this is not what Jews do. We don't use our superior power to harm others at little risk to ourselves, because their lives are more expendable than ours.

Maybe this is because in two thousand years we have never had a land of our own to defend. Maybe this is because we have never had the power to harm others. Maybe all we were waiting for is the opportunity. But that's a depressing thought.

Here's a question for you all, though - what other races are you watching, besides the Presidential?

I have a special interest in:

the Minnesota senate race - Norm Coleman vs. Al Franken. Franken is currently up by a point or two. This is Paul Wellstone's old seat and I and everyone else I know would love to see Coleman lose and a liberal - and friend of Paul's - win the seat.

NJ-05 - Scott Garrett vs. Dennis Shulman. This is the district I grew up in, in NJ. It was held by a moderate republican for over a decade before Garrett came along. Garrett is one of the four or five most conservative members of the house. Conversely, Shulman is pretty liberal - plus he's a rabbi, a clinical psychologist, and blind. If nothing else, he'd make the most interesting new addition to congress.

Georgia senate race - Saxby Chambliss vs. Jim Martin. Although Saxby has an awesome name, he's a complete asshole. He won in 2002 by showing ads that compared then-incumbent democratic senator Max Cleland to Osama bin laden that questioned his patriotism. If we're not allowed to question McCain's patriotism for being a POW, I don't see how Chambliss got away with questioning the patriotism of a guy who lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam. Like the Minnesota race, this is mostly about me wanting to see an asshole lose.

Prop 8 in California - Gay Marriage - Prop 8 is a referendum to end gay marriage in California (and, I believe, retroactively invalidate marriages that have been performed there?). The yes-on-8 folks have been almost entirely funded by out of state mormons. Go figure.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

Don't look now, I think the invisible hand is giving you the invisible finger.

Today had an exciting break from routine - Al Gore came to campus and gave a speech. Given that Gore is probably my favorite living politician and that I've never seen him speak before, I decided to get there early and camp out in the good seats, raging head cold be damned. (Harvard, ridiculous but lovely place that it is, provided free apple cider and squash soup to everyone attending. It made the two hours of sitting in the frigid, rainy weather a little more bearable.)

Gore gave a great speech in which he talked not just about global warming (which was to be expected, given that he was speaking for Sustainability Day) but about how we live in a culture where reason and truth are no longer the prime motivators for anything we do. He linked denial about global warming to the false premises behind the Iraq War (75% of Americans polled the night of the congress' vote thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11) and the brazen assumptions that were the fuel of the subprime and credit default crisis. He blasted the media for helping foster a culture where what's entertaining is more important than what really impacts us and where all we have is the pretense of objectivity, a poor substitute for truth.

He quoted Theodor Adorno on Germany under the Nazis: "Questions of fact had become questions of power."

There was then a brief but deep silence as everyone digested that remark. Then Gore frowned and said something along the lines of, "Of course, America isn't Nazi Germany." But you could tell that he wanted the audience to draw the comparison.

I don't believe that all the world's problems could be solved if only everyone were reasonable about things. I don't think that truth is something easy to find, or even something that always exists. But, like Gore, I think that any government - any media - any culture who does away with facts, who treats them like little weights or bargaining chips that should be evenly balanced between all sides, who pretends to to objectivity without acknowledging their own deep biases, is in trouble. Facts, reason - that's how we communicate with each other. That's how we convince each other, without resorting to force. If reason is useless, than there is no defense against power but power. If reason is disregarded, then the powerless are also the defenseless.

I'm glad that Obama's probably going to win. That the democrats are going to control both the executive branch and congress. And I think it's incredibly exciting that Obama's making the shift from foreign oil to alternative energy a centerpiece of his campaign - I think that's the single most important change that America needs to make.

But I'm still frightened. I don't know why Obama's winning now, when Kerry lost in 2004 and Gore in 2000. I get the feeling that it's not because the American electorate suddenly started listening to reason.

We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

I think this is objectively repulsive.

There is a long and ugly history of voter suppression in this country, primarily of minorities and people living in impoverished areas. Urban areas given bad machinery that throws out a greater percentage of votes. A much higher ratio of voters to voting machines, so that lines at polling places in urban areas stretch out for blocks. People who have to work to eat forced to take the day off so they can stand for eight hours in line - while others who can take a day off can speed through the process in twenty minutes. Florida illegally removing the votes of (mostly minority) people who committed crimes in other states - and then also removing non-felons as well. Partisans challenging the residency (and therefore eligibility to vote) of people who are homeless or who have recently lost their homes. Flyers in minority neighborhoods advertising the wrong day to vote or falsely telling people they can't vote if they have outstanding fines or parking tickets.

But does anyone want to talk about that? No.

Look, what ACORN is being accused of is voter registration fraud. What is very different from voter fraud. Registration fraud just means some fake names are being registered. Well, I say, no harm, no foul. I don't care who's registered, so long as only eligible people actually come out and vote.

How exactly do you commit actual vote fraud? Well, to start off, you have to find someone willing to vote multiple times under different aliases. Given that the penalty for vote fraud is prison time, you'll have to pay these people a lot. And unfortunately, you can't risk them going to the same polling place twice, otherwise they might be recognized by poll workers. So you have to drive them around to all the different places they've fake-registered. Maybe you'll hit up a dozen polling places in a day. Maybe even two dozen. It's easier if you do it absentee, but even then, you've got to provide identification... identification that's a lot harder to fake than just filling out a form and saying your name is Mickey Mouse. Why would anyone try to register as Mickey Mouse? No one would. Most of these registrations are made up by lazy workers at registration drives who just want their $10 an hour, please. No one is going to try to get an extra vote out of these things.

And look, ACORN specifically has done everything they can to combat registration fraud. They're legally required to hand every single registration card they get over to authorities, but they've been patiently checking and double-checking and flagging anything they think is suspicious so that the local authorities can look into it further. Frequently, this information has been ignored. In Nevada, the authorities are accusing them of voter fraud, citing the same registrations that ACORN told them they should look at several months ago.

So there you have it. While voter suppression is blithely ignored, nonexistent voter fraud is suddenly the big scandal of the 2008 campaign. I mean, damn, has anybody been paying attention to what happened with the U.S. attorney firing scandal? Where the Bush department of Justice illegally fired U.S. attorneys - most of them Republicans - because they refused to follow up on allegations of voter fraud that were patently unfounded? Has anyone ever even heard of someone - anyone - going to jail for vote fraud?

And you know what? I'm going to go there: This is racist. This is completely racist. And classist, too, while we're at it.

They're actively suppressing the vote of poor people and minorities, and when groups like ACORN try to increase voter turnout among those groups, they try to smear them and say they're committing fraud.

I'm not saying the democrats wouldn't do exactly the same thing if they had the opportunity. But the fact of the matter is that right here, right now, the Republicans are trying to keep minorities and poor people from voting. And that's pretty damn disgusting.

Today is the last day to register to vote in the Great State of Pennsylvania -- as well as in Texas, and probably also in several other states. So if you're a US citizen over the age of 18 with no recent felony record and you're not registered, for heaven's sake, get out there and do it! You can find out if you're registered and locate your polling location at this nifty site.

Eight years ago, I liked John McCain. Not a lot, of course, and definitely not enough to support him - at fifteen years old, I littered the roads of my little town with Gore for President signs, and even spent a few nights phone-banking for him. But I still liked McCain. Which was no surprise - I was never a partisan democrat. In addition to phone-banking for my congresswoman, republican Marge Roukema, when I was 18, I spent a semester interning for another republican congresswoman of mine, Connie Morella. (Who was, by the way, completely awesome.)

Anyway, I never agreed with McCain's opinions on social issues - gay marriage, abortion, etc. - but I always had the sense that he was a man of integrity, who was loyal more to the principles of his party than whoever happened to be in power at the time.

I have grown more cynical since I was sixteen. I am less willing to give politicians the benefit of the doubt. I am less willing to trust them to do the right thing. I have changed.

So has John McCain.

Over the past eight years, he has been positioning himself for another presidential run. Unable to do this as a maverick, he has abandoned his positions - if they ever were his positions - and fully embraced George W. Bush's philosophy.

Of course, if you're not paying attention, you wouldn't necessarily notice this. You might think he's still a maverick. But he is not a maverick. In 2007, he voted with Bush 95% of the time. This past year, he has voted with Bush Every. Single. Vote.

What sorts of things has he voted on?

- He voted against Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, but voted to make them permanent in 2006. He is running now on his own set of tax cuts which sound just up Bush's alley: lots of tax cuts for wealthy people and for corporations, with low-income and middle-class families passed by. (My favorite part is how corporations such as Wal*Mart will now pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as I do! Awesome. My second favorite part is how he and his wife themselves would get $300,000 in tax refunds. Check that website for a nifty graph comparing how the McCain and Obama tax plans would affect the McCain and Obama households.)

- He voted against the U.S. ban on torture, despite being a former prisoner of war himself and having previously led opposition to U.S. use of water-boarding and other types of torture.

- He has voted against funding health care for veterans at least five times and against increasing money for safety equipment for troops in Iraq at least twice.

Then, of course, there's his votes on Iraq, on the Patriot Act, his support for telecomm immunity - I could go on and on, but I'll spare you all (and myself).

Of course, there are plenty of things he hasn't made the wrong vote on. Those, he didn't vote on at all. According to the Wash Post he's missed 60% of senate votes as of late May - by contrast, Obama missed 40% and Clinton missed 30%, during the primary season. (The only senator who missed more than McCain had a brain hemorrhage.)

The only thing McCain had going for him in 2000 was his integrity and his maverick positions on a few important issues. With those gone, what exactly about John McCain am I supposed to like and respect? Am I supposed to be charmed by his off-color, frequently misogynist, racist, and homophobic sense of humor? Am I supposed to identify with the lifestyle of a man who owns seven houses? Am I supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to a man who believes that my friends shouldn't be allowed to adopt or marry and that the government can control what I do with my own body?

There are precious few things left to like about McCain. I like that he supports stem cell research - but Obama supports that as well. I like that he's for providing illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship - but, again, Obama supports that as well.

I mean, I just don't understand how people - democrats, friends of mine - can take him seriously as a presidential candidate. I just don't. What do people possibly see in him? Are they ignorant? Do they have such very different values from me? Or am I missing something obvious, some shining example of character or good judgment that mitigates his abhorrent positions and decisions?

I'm going to do these every once in a while and see how many I get before the election is over. Clumping them in groups of 10 or more to save everyone's sanity, though.

1. Tax breaks and campaign contributions. Maybe it's not a quid pro quo, but doesn't it make you a little uncomfortable that corporate CEOs are donating 10:1 in favor of McCain, while their employees are donating more to Obama? Of course, it makes sense, since McCain's tax plan gives $45 billion in tax breaks to the nation's biggest companies, including $4 billion to the largest oil companies and $1 billion each to Wal Mart, Bank of America, and many others. But hey, maybe McCain's not doing it for the CEOs... after all, he and his wife will get $300,000 in tax cuts!

5. Of course, this isn't the first misstatement McCain has made. After all, he can't really think that Iraq and Pakistan share a border, right? That Somalia and Sudan are the same country? Or that Czechoslovakia still, y'know, exists?

6. We'd better hope those are all just misstatements, since I don't think even losing the election will quell McCain's need to interfere in foreign affairs. Inappropriate, much?

7. Lies about inventing things. I actually don't care about this either way, but think of how the media jumped all over Gore for once misspeaking about his role in supporting the creation of the internet.

8 & 9. Misses crucial alternative energy votes - and then lies about it. McCain says he hasn't missed "any crucial energy votes"... from this link: John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote. Not to mention a piece of renewable energy legislation which failed by one vote... John McCain's...

10. Does not know how to use a computer. My grandparents have learned to use AIM and they're a) older than McCain and b) not running to be leader of the free world. I'm just sayin'.

There are a couple at Gwen's apartment, so I picked one up and flipped through it. At first it was merely annoying - all stories about socialites and how to decorate your summer homes. There was an article about Chris Evert that was actually what made me pick the damn thing up, but it ended up being about how her style had changed over time. I would rather read about how her tennis game changed.

Anyway, this was all fairly unoffensive, inasmuch as one can read glowing praise of how eco-friendly some rich chick's six cars are without being offended, until I reached the "health and beauty" section.

One article on micro-surgery. Which is cosmetic surgery that no one notices you've had - small, slow changes to the tip of the nose, the jaw, the sides of the eyes. Another article on brides buying botox or boob jobs for their bridesmaids. (I mean, really, Debi. You held out on us.) But the kicker? An article subtitled 'In the quest for beauty, has one body part been overlooked?'.

I know that as active, intelligent American citizens we're supposed to make decisions based on Serious Issues, and not be swayed by little things like how well the candidate bowls or how much his haircut cost or whether he's ever committed an impeachable offense. However, I just had to start off my John McCain series with something a little superficial... his sense of humor.

God, I love a man with a sense of humor, and isn't it true that I just love John McCain? I think he should consider a career as a stand-up comic. In fact, I think he should get started with that immediately.

Here are some of his best - trust me, they had me howling (with laughter, of course!).

[Have you heard] the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? ... When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

Now, in all fairness, McCain denies ever telling the cunt joke and the ape joke, but given his track record and his non-denial denials, I tend to believe he did.

So, I'm planning on doing quite a few posts on John McCain, but before I do, I wanted to get a sense of how my friendslist feels about him. So - a poll! (God, I love polls. How have I lived without them?) I changed the settings so only I can see your individual answers- if you really want to be private about this, you can also answer anonymously in a comment to this post.

If there's one thing I've gotten out of the past few months of brain-meltingly frustrating political debates, it's the realization that most discussions have absolutely nothing to do with facts, logic, or even ideology. Very rarely do you even get to the point where you're talking directly about the issue you disagree on. It's all a fantastic exercise in framing the debate so only you can possibly be right. Or, failing that, you just aggressively miss the point.

It's a psychological gold mine. So I ought to just step back, delete my variations on "That wasn't what I was saying at all, you assmouthed troll!" and treat this scientifically. That is, however, easier said and done.

I also seriously wish people would get over being called sexist. I don't mind being called racist - mostly because whoever's calling me that is usually right. I don't see why being called out for sexist behavior is such a big deal - it's not like I'm accusing you of kidnapping girl scouts. Everyone fucks up. But all of a sudden it's "How dare you call me sexist!" and "You're just distracting from real sexism!" as though I ought to keep mum about any and all sexism I see until I'm sure everyone I've ever met will agree with me that it's totally wrong - which, somebody somewhere thought this was all in good fun, so we'll probably be waiting a while.

News flash, folks: as ego-hurty as it is to realize you've accidentally oppressed someone (or even to be accused when you really weren't) it's worse to be oppressed.

Ugh. Anyway. I'll update in a bit about this past weekend, and you'll get to hear the exciting story of Drunken Shauna and the Bay Area Regional Transit System. With bonus pictures of Quayleman and cops doing kegstands. Stay tuned!

I have a headache from trying to decipher 18th and 19th century political philosophy writing. And I still don't understand property.

I would welcome anyone who could articulate their personal theory of property, and answer the following questions:

1. How does property arise? Is it possible for people to live without having some idea of property?2. Does a man have the right to kill another man to defend his property?3. In the midst of a famine, there are three men, and one meal. Who gets the meal? What further details could help you make a decision, and why?